


feel it still

by icedmachinery, icemachine



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, just two faceless people trying to make out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24943261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icedmachinery/pseuds/icedmachinery, https://archiveofourown.org/users/icemachine/pseuds/icemachine
Summary: “I don’t know if you’d like… the real me,” Larry breathes; it feels like another burn when he admits this. “You know that the accident burned my entire body, right?”“Yeah, I know.”“And you’re—”“Larry,” Tyme says, stern, rough. “I don’t even have a face. My head is literally a goddamn clock. We’re not so different.”(Time, insecurity, and navigating your new relationship with a clock-headed "madman".)
Relationships: Jonathan Tyme/Larry Trainor
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45





	feel it still

  
  


“Can you even feel this?” Larry asks, pressing his bandaged face against Tyme’s neck, his lips biting softly against the fabric & moving over Tyme’s exposed skin—-their version of a kiss, their version of touch. “I don’t know if—”

Tyme rests his hands on Larry’s hips, pushes him down  _ hard  _ onto his own body, which - naturally - shuts Larry up immediately upon impact. He lets out a soft, low moan, stifled by his bandages.

“I can feel it,” Tyme whispers, finally. “You know I like it, baby.”

They’ve been doing this for months, now, but trying to measure time here is utterly meaningless. He begs the Spirit to bring him to Tyme’s dimension, they touch without touching, and Larry ends up hating how he  _ yearns  _ for more, for the ability to touch him, for the ability to  _ truly  _ press himself into Tyme and feel  _ everything  _ that the universe can offer him, here, on  _ their  _ bed (which is a term he isn’t quite used to yet), with rainbow lights that have no identifiable source moving through the air around them & every texture of his surroundings, every sensation, experienced to the fullest extent.

It is extremely easy to forget that Tyme is evil when he’s touching you in places that haven’t been touched for decades. But Niles had said his research on the man was “thin”, and the normally-protective Negative Spirit is allowing this relationship to occur—- _ maybe,  _ Larry thinks,  _ he isn’t that bad. _

“I’m glad,” he says, and they go through this every time -  _ can you feel it, yes, do you like it, yes, am I terrible at loving, not anymore.  _ “I just… I sometimes wish…”

“You want to touch me for real,” Tyme finishes. 

“Yeah,” Larry admits. “But you know I can’t, so… it’s ridiculous.”

Tyme pauses, for a moment, his fingers tapping restlessly against the clips of Larry’s suspenders. Then his eyes light up to a pulsing brighter blue, and something stiffens underneath Larry. “Well,” Tyme says, “there is — one way, now that I think of it.”

“How is that possible?”

He laughs. “I’m surfing outside the waters of space n’ time here, darling. Those laws don’t exactly apply to me.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I can freeze us in the moment,” Tyme tells him. “Stop everything, so that I won’t be exposed to that gnarly radiation long enough for it to do any real damage.”

Larry considers this. 

_ Oh,  _ he thinks. If he takes the bandages away, Larry is exposed,  _ vulnerable.  _ Tyme will see him for what he truly is: a sad, burned, disfigured thing, the horrid past scars surfacing to taint his appearance. Tyme is attractive, even with the unfortunate status of his head; Larry can never view himself as attractive. He despises his features. The flesh is a mere reminder of—-

“Hey, we don’t gotta do it if you don’t want to,” Tyme says, interrupting his spiral. “Just saying that it’s an option.”

“I don’t know if you’d like… the real me,” Larry breathes; it feels like another burn when he admits this. “You know that the accident burned my entire body, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And you’re—”

“Larry,” Tyme says, stern, rough. “I don’t even have a face. My head is literally a goddamn clock. We’re not so different.”

“You’re really trying to tell me you won’t find me disgusting?”

“Totally.”

“Niles was right. You  _ are  _ insane.”

“Oh, yeah, of course I am, baby. But not for this.”

Larry inhales; okay. He will allow himself to be seen, if only to test his dedication,  _ only  _ to discern the truth of whether or not the present day Larry Trainor can truly be desired.

“Fine, okay,” he says. “But… don’t look until I’m done.”

A beam exits the stone in the middle of Tyme’s forehead, freezing the lights in the room and illuminating their bodies. “Actually,” Tyme says, “I was kinda hoping I could do it.”

“Wh — what?”

“Let me take ‘em off for you. For some reason, that idea makes me go all tingly.”

Larry shrugs. “I guess that’s fine.”

“Rad.”

He reaches behind Larry’s head and tugs at the first bandages, unravels them slowly, with an amount of care that you wouldn’t expect from someone with his kind of moral ambiguity. It surprises Larry —- he’s  _ careful,  _ he seems to be enjoying the slowness of Larry’s breath and increasing vulnerability.

And then he says it.

“God, you’re hot.”

It actually makes Larry giggle; it’s an obvious pun that doesn’t reduce the odd intimacy of the situation. Never in a million fucking  _ years  _ did he imagine himself doing this when they first met. It’s hard to call it intimacy, knowing the circumstances, but Tyme is the first person to see him without his bandages since Rita in the sixties, and it’s an entirely different context here.

When he finishes and Larry’s head is bare, Tyme presses his hand against Larry’s cheek. It feels —- it feels  _ good.  _ It feels raw. It’s the only real thing he knows.

“How are you feeling?”

“Not terrible.”

“Hands now?”

“Yeah.”

Another beam blinks away his gloves, and Tyme starts pulling at the bandages around his fingers. This time they come off quickly, spiraling onto Tyme’s chest until his hands are free, breathing,  _ feeling.  _ He pushes the bandages away and replaces them with his palm, feeling the smoothness of the skin. It’s almost intoxicating.

“Yeah,” Tyme says. “You’re  _ definitely  _ not disgusting.”

Larry can almost grasp a smile. He never wants this to end.

He realizes that it doesn’t have to.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i literally wrote 2 things in one day. holy shit.


End file.
